Plucking Out the Right Eye: Part One

Plucking Out the Right Eye

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. (Matthew 5:29)

The other day I wrote to a friend who knew of past struggles I had with a guy. Originally I had turned to him because I didn’t have a female friend to turn to with his depth of wisdom, nor was I established in a church home. He gave me wise advice and support (though in the future I shall turn to women, which is much more of a wise choice unless one has a husband). So then when the struggle came back strongly this year I once again turned to him for advice. Then recently I wrote to inform him that I was following his advice and to thank him (again?). His response to what I told him led me to think the last letter to him might be worth sharing. To do that, I must tell you some of my story.

It’s a story that used to love to ring down the halls of my memory, that I once would have eagerly related in mind and in words. I would have delighted in all the surprising turns of events all over again, rejoicing at how the obscure transformed into common ground for two people. Now, though, I must be careful. I know my heart better. I know I can’t let myself loose in the fields of memory and expect not to come back crying for the holes I fall into, the walls of reality I waltz square into. Much worse, I know that for me a daydreaming mind tends to be an idol factory, focusing my heart on men above the Lord God.

[Cut this part for now--going to rewrite in less detail and put back]

It’s been many months now and I’m still holding out. Most of the time I am not troubled when I think of him, especially not to the old degrees, though occasionally it seems just as bad. How do you defeat a fantasy? How do you tear it apart, when you don’t even know the bad about somebody that many would try to focus on (should I even want to use that method--that could be another post in itself) to try and stop a fixation? Included in the following post are some of the thoughts shared with my friend which point me away from idols and back to God.